FLU Vaccination Clinics 2010
Mobile Phone Numbers
How to find your NHS Number
Pandemic (or Swine) Flu
Are your Medical Records Up-to-Date ?
Repeat Prescriptions
Data & Paperlight Accreditation
Practice Area Expansion
Extended Opening Hours
Open Letter to Patients
Patient Experience Survey
Patient Self Check-In
Going Aboard ?
Childhood Immunisation
Why GPs charge fees
Choose and Book
Repeat Dispensing
AGED 65 OR OVER ? ... Make sure you get your pneumo jab
Online Appointment Cancellations
Book Sale
Appointment Times for Blood Tests
Are your Medical Records Up-to-Date ?
Secretaries
Blood Pressure Monitoring.
New Spirometer.
Blood Tests.
If you are 65 or over and/or are in the Clinical risk groups listed below, then we will again be holding open days for patients requiring a flu vaccine
Patients may attend on:
TUESDAY 5th and 12th OCTOBER
between 9am – 12.30pm & 2pm – 4pm
FRIDAY 22nd OCTOBER
between 10.30am – 12.30pm
WEDNESDAY 27th OCTOBER
between 4.30pm – 6pm
Remember, No Appointment Required !!
Do I need to Pay for the Flu Vaccine ?
The Flu Vaccine is free to:
All people over the age of 65.
or:
People of all ages who suffer with:
Patients who want to have a Flu Vaccine but do not qualify under the criteria above, can attend The Ross Practice for a Private Vaccination @ £20 per vaccine. Please note that patients with chronic diseases will take priority over other patients.
We are aware that Supermarkets may be offering a cheaper service but, unlike a Supermarket, we have a Doctor on site when any vaccination is given and a full record of the vaccination given will be attached to the patient´s medical records.
Please ensure that we have your current mobile phone number.
In the course of the next few months we will be sending health information by text message directly to your mobile phones.
We also have future intentions to send a text to your mobile phones 24 or 48 hours prior to your appointment as a reminder.
We hope that this service will reduce the number of patients who do not attend for their appointment.
Details of how to find out your NHS Number can be downloaded here.
If you have flu-like symptoms (high temperature, cough, sore throat, runny nose, limb/joint pain & headache)
and
Onset of symptoms within 7 days of visiting areas known to have infections of Swine Flu.
PLEASE DO NOT VISIT THE SURGERY – Stay at Home and call NHS Direct on:
0845 46 47
or visit www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk for further advice.
If you feel very unwell and are concerned about your symptoms, please call the Surgery and speak to a GP.
Please help us by completing our online Health Questionnaire.
Also, are You a Smoker or Have you Given Up ?
We would be grateful if you would take a few minutes to let us know.
Have you moved address ?
Please complete our Change of Address form.
Have you monitored your Blood Pressure ?
Please complete our Blood Pressure Monitoring form online.
Order your Repeat Prescriptions online.
The practice is very proud to announce that it became the first practice in the West Essex PCT area to attain Data & Paperlight Accreditation following a Data Accreditation visit by the PCT on the 18th Dec 2008.
Please note that we have now expanded our GP practice area & new patients are welcomed.
Contact may be made by calling: 0844 477 3558 or via the contact form on this website.
Full details on how to register can be found on our Services page.
The Hamilton Practice has responded positively to the government ‘Extended Hours’ initiative.
This is aimed at patients who, by the constant demand of their working hours, are always unable to attend their registered surgery for regular appointments between the normal surgery opening hours of 8.00am to 6.30pm.
The Surgery has made ‘Early Morning Appointments’ available since the beginning of the year; these occur on Friday mornings starting at 7.30am. These are routine appointments only and must be booked in advance.
As from the 31st December 2008 this service will be expanded to Monday evenings from 6.30pm to 8.30pm (last bookable appointment 7.50pm).
These surgeries have just one or two Doctors (no Nurse or Healthcare Assistant) and are not available for emergency or walk-in use.
The Hamilton Practice remains, to all intents and purposes, closed from 6.30pm to 8.00am when PELC provides emergency cover on behalf of all GPs in Harlow.
During the new ‘Extended Hours’ the Reception desk will not be open to take telephone calls, book appointments, collect prescriptions, provide test results or answer any queries.
Dear Patients,
You may have recently read newspaper articles, or seen or heard news items, which have criticised general practices for receiving increased income since the introduction of the new GP contract in 2004.
We are aware that some patients are concerned that we may be planning cuts in our services in order to deflect such criticisms. We would like to reassure you that we have no such plans.
Before the introduction of the new contract, the practice was funded by the NHS in a way that placed greater emphasis on making claims for individual services, such as contraception, than on treating chronic illnesses.
This changed in 2004, and we now have several hundred quality targets to meet in order to earn income for the practice from the NHS.
These targets are very detailed and quite specific, and have required the practice to invest heavily in additional clinical services and recording of computerised data.
Many of the targets are calculated by auditing your medical records. However, this is done by computer, in an anonymised format, without disclosing your personal details.
For example, patients with hypertension (raised blood pressure) have to have blood pressure levels below 150/90, and even lower if they also suffer from diabetes and/or chronic kidney disease.
In addition to several hundred targets of this nature, which range from asthma to thyroid disease, we are also expected to do:
Additional Staff:
In order to achieve all these various requirements, we have had to employ additional staff to help monitor patients with chronic illnesses more closely and also to add data sent to us, on paper, by the hospitals and other healthcare providers.
Sadly, the NHS is not yet able to provide us with the electronic transfer of such documents, and the rising tide of paperwork – resulting from additional referrals and treatments – has to be scanned onto the computer page by page, and manually linked to each patient’s computerised record.
The current situation is providing us with something of a dilemma: if we strive to reduce the practice’s income (because the practice is perceived to be earning too much), we will have to cut some of the new services or standards that we have introduced in recent years.
We regard this as undesirable for several reasons.
Firstly, we feel we should be striving to improve the range and quality of services, not limiting these.
Secondly, the practice’s running costs (for example, staff members’ salaries, building maintenance and utilities, clinical and office equipment, and essential supplies) are paid for out of these earnings. The NHS does not reimburse us for such expenditure and it would be shortsighted to skimp on any of these.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we believe that we owe it to our patients to continue improving the practice.
Opening Hours:
Recently, we have been coming under increasing pressure to extend our opening hours. This causes us several problems.
Our practice personnel all have families and lives outside work. There are limits to the demands that we can make on them.
We also have to adhere to the requirements of the European Working Time Directive for our employees. Fortunately for the practice, the GP partners are not confined to remaining within the maximum permitted number of hours that can be worked in a week.
It is difficult to see how we could achieve extended hours (more than we are), even if we ignore calls to cut practice earnings and retain them at their existing levels.
Due to the lack of any uplift in our NHS income in 2006 and 2007 to allow for the effects of inflation, the practice has been funding rising costs, such as staff and utilities, from a declining income.
So it would have difficulty subsidising further increases in staff costs, especially for staff members being required to work so-called unsocial hours.
The other major constraint hampering extended opening hours is that there are no plans to extend the various support services on which our patients rely, such as district nursing, laboratory tests, X-rays and social work. So we find ourselves constrained in every direction.
We continue to have your best interests at heart and will strive to deliver the highest possible standards of quality care, in spite of the current media campaign to the contrary.
We hope that you will support this approach and help us weather this very difficult period that is adversely affecting the morale of all practice personnel.
Thank you
The Department of Health has issued a survey through the post, asking for your views on access to medical services at this practice, and in particular, your access to appointment booking and staff on the telephone. It is possible that this, or similar exercises will be repeated in the future. The doctors would ask: that you reply positively to these surveys, and would like you to be aware of the following facts:
Please support us and provide a positive reply to any questionnaires of this nature which you may receive!
THANK YOU!
Patients can now save time & avoid queuing by checking-in for their appointment using our new automated check in system. This can be done through the touch screen located in the waiting room.
Please take a look at our Travel Clinic.
Childhood Immunisation and Pneumococcal catch-up programme. Any parents with concerns or questions should go to: www.immunisation.nhs.uk
For an explanation please click here.
Please also see our 'Private Medical Services page.
Choose and Book is a new service ... Click here for details.
Repeat Dispensing is a new way for you to get your regular prescription.
If you are on the same medication regularly and use the same pharmacy then under this scheme you can get you repeat prescrptions direct from your pharmacy, rather than getting them from your surgery each time.
If you would like to know more about this scheme then please ask your pharmacist or enquire at the surgery where we will be able to give you more information.
Everybody aged 65 and over should now be immunised to help protect them against pneumococcal infection which can cause diseases such as pneumonia, septicaemia (blood poisoning) and meningitis.
The pneumococcal (pneumo for short) vaccine can be given at any time of year.
Most people only need to have the vaccine once, unlike the 'flu jab' which has to be given annually.
You can book an appointment with the practice nurses or doctors to have this done.
You can get more information about the pneumococcal vaccine from the surgery, or you can call NHS direct on 0845 4647. You can also visit the NHS immunisation website at www.immunisation.nhs.uk.
If you need to cancel your appointment with us, it is now possible to inform us via this web site. Please click here for further details.
Up to 80 patients fail to cancel their appointment each month. This wastes a lot of valuable Doctor and Nursing time and also means everyone waits longer to be seen.
By telling us in good time that you cannot make an appointment, we can offer your appointment to someone else. This helps us to reduce waiting times and means everyone can be seen sooner.
In order to purchase medical equipment for the practice such as Heart Monitors, The Friends of The Hamilton Practice have organised a Book Sale.
The books are on sale at the front of the waiting room underneath the patient call display system.
Hard Backs are 50p and Soft Backs are 25p.
Yes - Donations of your unwanted books are always welcome !
From the 1st September 2004 patients will be required to make appointments for bloods in The Hamilton & Ross Practices.
On Tuesdays (Ross) and Wednesdays (Hamilton), fasting patients will be seen between 9.30am – 10.30am with non-fasting patients seen between 10.30am – 11.30am.
On Fridays (Hamilton), fasting patients will be seen between 10am – 10.30am with non-fasting patients seen between 10.30am – 11am.
PLEASE NOTE: The Ross Practice Telephone number for appointments is: 692747.
We would be grateful if you would take a few minutes to fill out our online Questionnaire. Click here for details.
If you need to speak to one of our secretaries please call between 10am - 2pm Monday - Friday.
For patients who regularly monitor their blood pressure, we have a new service. More ...
We now have a new Spirometer which will help us with the assessment and management of respiratory disease.
50% of the cost of this machine was met by "The Friends of The Hamilton Practice" through their fundraising activities.
The local press came to take pictures today (15th June) of the formal presentation of the Spirometer by the "Friends" to the surgery and there will be an article in this weeks "Harlow Star".
New "Friends" are always welcome. Click here to take a look at the 'Friends' page and please contact the surgery for further details.
The times for blood tests have changed. Please click here to view the revised timetable.
Go to Top of Page | Copyright © 2010 The Hamilton Practice.